The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many cases of financial crises throughout its communities. Sonoma State University is one of the campuses suffering a major setback with lows of student enrollment these past couple of years. 

On September 17, 2021, SSU officials sent out an email to all of its employees regarding a new and reformed budget plan with an attempt to knock down its spending deficit of $11 million.

Schools have been found to be struggling from the pandemic as there are many campuses suffering from budgetary losses as they try to adapt to online learning. Sonoma State seems to be one California school suffering the most from a lack of enrollment despite many other California State campuses looking at a rise in their student numbers. 

On Friday the 17th, SSU officials sent out a new budget plan with the main focus on reducing its $11 million deficit. They announced that they would do this by utilizing Higher Education Emergency Relief Funding, campus reserves, division year end balances, and one anticipated one-time savings in the current year. HEERF was passed in March 2020 by congress that initially administered billion of dollars to schools by the Department of Education.

Some notable information on their $136.3 million budget plan include explaining their revenue percentages as 59% coming from state allocation, 28% from student tuitions and mandatory fees, as well as 13% coming from recovery costs. 

They also show that the majority of the expenses, $127.5 million, are toward university-wide departments and programs, Academic Affairs, and Administration and Finance. The remaining money goes toward Student Affairs, the President’s Office, University Advancement, and the Green Music Center. 

While this budget plan has come out just recently, there are already some students who find these expenses a little surprising. 

“I think $2.4 million in the President’s Office is surprising,” says student Manuel Ponce. “I’m not sure exactly what it means but it doesn’t sound too efficient. However I think more money should be focused on student affairs, especially how students should be and are the main focus of what a university stands for. So I think that $3.7 million just isn’t enough for what it is.” 

While the main focus of this whole situation is to ease off on spending in order to overcome this $11 million deficit, many argue that the focus of this should be to close down on the low student enrollment problem.

 When asked what actions could be done by officials and students to bring efficient enrollment rates back on track, the third-year business major had much to say. 

“I definitely think that they should have a lot more in-person classes and stop giving that option online,” explains Ponce. “Even though many people do take advantage of that and do like it, I dont think it’s financially good for the school to have that. I also know for a fact that there are a lot of students that took breaks from school because it was going to be online and they feel like they can’t learn at their best doing that. So I think that just by finding a way to overcome that and getting students to want to come back to campus can help the school overcome this huge deficit.” 

SSU officials are also encouraging campus community members to engage with their President’s Budget Advisory Committee representatives as well as attending the Fall budget and planning forum in October to learn more about the budget deficit, the one-time solutions, as well as how they are going to work on the base deficit. The 2021-2022 campus budget can be accessed through the Openbook Portal.